Blessed Be The Ties That Bind
by Mala
Summary: A filler scene for 2.17, "A Dark Turn", with my own spin on Jack and Irina's motivation.


Title: "Blessed Be The Ties That Bind" 1/1  
  
Author: Mala  
  
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com  
  
Fandom: "Alias"  
  
Rating/Classification: PG-13, J/I, angst, mild language.  
  
Disclaimer: Bad Robot!  
  
Summary: A filler ficlet for "A Dark Turn", 2.17, with my own spin on Irina and Jack's motivation.  
  
It would be too little to call what they did "making love." Too much to call it "fucking." Accurate to call it "inevitable."  
  
He knows her body better than his own. Has seen it in his fevered nightmares for over twenty years. Has made it a guilty fantasy washed down- -drowned--with Glenlivet. But the reality now, lined and taut with age but no less supple...just a thousand times leaner and harder...was something fresh and new and nearly hateful under his palms. She showed not the same contempt for the extra padding around his waist, the gray hairs that decorate his chest like badges of dishonor. She touched him like he's still young and foolish.  
  
And maybe he is.  
  
There are large, hand-shaped, bruises on her hips, the firm thumbprints almost meeting at the juncture of her thighs, and tinier black- blue marks dot her wrists and shoulders like ropes of stars.  
  
There are long, red, raw, scratches across his back, the grooves almost creating a musical staff for the hoarse notes she drew from his throat.  
  
They dress in silence, thankful for decades of practice in wordless efficiency...for soft cotton and full sleeves...for the rays of dawn coming in the window that erase not the wounds...just what caused them.  
  
"Be careful," he cautions, watching her slide the Rambaldi pages down the back of her pants. "Please, just be careful."  
  
"I'll be reckless," she counters, softly, crossing the room and touching the backs of her fingers to his rough-stubbled cheek. "I don't know any other way." *** It is easy to pretend betrayal. Perhaps because it may not be pretense at all. He stumbles as he walks away from the empty car, hears Kendall's recriminations in his head, echoing from the comm link like thunder. And he remembers the small silver suitcase... dispassionately glancing at the edge of a bright pink Post-It note peeking out from the leather binding, and saying, "Yes, the documents are secure," before it was locked up once more and taken from Derevko's cell.  
  
In the middle of the night, he removed the bandage from her shoulder and kissed the tiny red incision with something like tenderness. He needs no tracker to follow her. He's been following her half his life.  
  
Of course, there is high potential for error. He could be as stupid as he was when he married Laura. She could be twisting the knife once again, deeper, and disemboweling him...crowing over how she broke Jack Bristow's defenses down not once...but twice. And wouldn't this victory be worse? Because he fought her for so long...his suspicion so much more cutting than the violence they inflicted on each other in the cheap safehouse bed.  
  
He took that chance. He'll do anything to bring down Arvin Sloane. Even let her go.  
  
Curled against his chest, her lips swollen and wanting, damnable orange lipstick smeared, she looked at him with eyes full of dark brown honesty. For just an instant amidst the lies. "You understand, don't you? I must do this my way."  
  
He wondered, "why?" against the sweat-dampened strands of her hair.  
  
She gave him the only answer he would believe. The only one he could ever accept.  
  
"I carried our child to term, Jack. They wanted me to marry you, not to give myself ties and weaknesses with children. But I defied them. I could not destroy something that we'd created." She swallowed, reflexively, the only sign of those very ties...her weakness. "Not the first time. Or the second. I...I thanked you for raising our daughter, Jack...you did so much better than I did...with our son."  
  
It was not a shock. Finding her alive was a shock. Sinking into her and feeling her clench around him like she was finding a piece of herself that had long been missing...*that* had been a shock. That she was pregnant when she left him...was par for the course.  
  
He'll admit that the boy has the shape of his face. His smile-- although he, himself, has forgotten how to form the expression. Of course, he also has his mother's single-minded focus, her duplicitous nature, and her misguided loyalties. There is no question.  
  
Only answers they all desperately need.  
  
He has to trust her.  
  
Despite the inevitable.  
  
***  
  
She stares at his profile in the semi-darkness of the van, marveling at how he has schooled his features to show no emotion, no fear, under the sharpness of her scrutiny. There was no hesitation when he shot the Delta Force soldiers...his hand didn't even waver. She knew he wouldn't miss, that the bullets wouldn't stray. He's often told her that he can't even accidentally shoot her in the heart because she doesn't have one.  
  
"What are you looking at, Mother?"  
  
Sark uses the term without affection. Simply mockery. Because a mockery is what she is. To him. To Jack. To Sydney. To herself.  
  
"You," she murmurs, low, so Sloane--on his cell phone making arrangements for their arrival--cannot hear. "You're so like your father."  
  
"The torch for Jack still burning?" An irreverent smile. "I had no idea you were such a romantic."  
  
"I'm not." She bites the inside of her cheek, does not reach for his hand or tug at the fair curls going awry at the base of his neck.  
  
The wry twist of lips turns into a full chuckle that dances across her bruises like cold wind. "So, how am I like him? Noble? Self- sacrificing? Appallingly stupid?"  
  
Arvin ends his call, dropping the phone and twisting around to look at them both quizzically. And she smiles, tucking strands of hair behind her ear before reaching for *his* hand. "You can't help but align yourself with reprehensible villains who are going to betray you."  
  
Inevitable.  
  
She knows no other way.  
  
--end-  
  
March 4, 2003. 


End file.
